


Did You Write the Book of Love?

by Jana



Category: Laundry - Charles Stross
Genre: Before The Rhesus Chart, Past The Apocalypse Codex, ofscreen noncon situations don't happen to the main character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-02-24 13:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2582552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jana/pseuds/Jana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN approaches rapidly, there is no such thing as a free lunch and the sandwiches to die for come at a steep price. Bob is sent to investigate and preferably purchase a new weapon that could give the Laundry a significant edge during the coming days. He may be Mahogany Row now, but he hasn't mastered the art of not asking questions when he knows he won't like the answers.</p><p>Eldrich horrors are about to break into our world because computers. Some people only wish they got to die for those sandwiches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Price of a Promotion

It's a strange thing, but things that go according to plan and average, boring, happy lives are tales soon told about, and not much to listen to; RE: average and boring. It's the things that are painful, palpitating and make you several days late for a long-awaited long weekend with your wife that make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. Some Russian author once wrote that all happy marriages are the same and the unhappy ones are unhappy in their own, unique way.

No, that isn't the precise quote and I don't remember who it was, or what the book was. It's just one of those quotes that float around the net like a restless spirit. The thing is, a bad, terrible, unhappy marriages make for interesting accounts and this is a tale of one of those.

No, not _my_ marriage! I'm as happy with my Mo as any man can be when he knows that the world he lives in is but a fragile soap bubble floating atop a vast sea of eldrich horrors and that the currents will break the surface tension any second now, thank you very much.

It all begun a few weeks after my return from Denver and the end of the world that kindly didn't happen. Yours truly did his part, but in all honesty a big part of the credit goes to Persephone Hazard (real name unknown because no-one can actually be named that) and Johnny McTavish. The whole mission turned out to have been a big test of my character that got seriously out of hand and you know what they say; the reward for a test aced is another test. In a way it begun with my wife. She had a leave of a whole week, barring any unexpected code blue situations, and we were lazying a Sunday morning away, allegedly shopping and actually sitting at a cafe near home. It's much too often that the Laundry has a use for Agent CANDID these days - and things are only going to get worse before they get better. It was a new place with cozy interior and decent tea that came with a plateful of very hard biscuits.

"How do you eat these?" Mo asked as she picked one of the biscuits up and tried to chew on the end, tried being the operative word.

There is something to Mo that is difficult to describe. She isn't, objectively speaking, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen - though I know better than to say anything so insensitive to her - but there is something when she tilts her head just so, like a wizard's trick. She is always lovely, but when I see the fine line of her jaw _just_ from that angle and how her cheekbone curves, it's as though all the years are shed from her face and I can see the pure lines of her. After all these years it never fails to make my mouth dry up like a ball of cotton.

"I think we need to soak them in the tea first; never should have trusted something called biscotti, it sound suspiciously French," I attempted to grumble like a proper Englishman and tried to catch the waitress's eye so I could order some real biscuits without actually looking if there was a waitress to be seen.

"It comes from Italy, actually. If I do that, then it will shed in my tea," Mo said with that devious glint to her eyes that told me I was soon going to be requested something. Very nicely, of course, wouldn't imagine making a scene in this fine establishment, no sir! Only, Mo knows what it does to me when she gets assertive and she uses it shamelessly to her advantage.

"Italy is even worse, and it's a biscuit, not a dog," I protested and gestured to the dyed-blonde waitress who was flirting with a young, handsome customer and summarily dismissing me as middle-aged, married and too polite to not tip her anyway. "I don't trust a country that has so many catacombs."

"You will let me dip this in your tea because you love me, right?" Mo asked and winked. It was terribly middle-class and boring, middle-age sexy and inane; it was a golden, shining moment of perfection as I struggled to find a way to prove that I loved her and yet not get biscotti sheddings in my tea, so of course this was when my phone rang.

"You are needed at the office immediately," said Angleton and that was that; my office hours are as the office demands and the week has eight days.

"I claim this tea in the name of the Queen and the country," Mo said triumphantly and grabbed the mug. "Be careful, Bob." And that was that. I don't have to lie to Mo, or justify myself. She knows that when i'm called in, it's because of a code blue or a failed paperclip audit or something equally important.

"At least I'm not a field agent anymore, I should come back for the night," I promised. I really should have learned better By now.

The reward for acing a test is another test. My shiny new promotion to the Mahogany Row came with a mission to Finland to investigate a matter of late cult activity - note the word late. There isn't a whole lot left of the cult now except a stain on the floor.

"You took your time," Angleton told me. I'm not his secretary anymore and technically speaking he was only relaying the mission to me, but simply being Angleton has inertia of its own that has got nothing to do with the TEAPOT. It was all I could do to not squirm under his gaze as his eyebrows clearly communicated that they didn't think I was ready for this yet, that I would better succeed and that they were, maybe, happy with my recent conduct. Mostly.

I would need at least three eyes and five eyebrows to do that, but he is Angleton. Enough said on that subject.

"Well, couldn't have happened to nicer people," I drawled and resisted the instinct to wilt under Angleton's stare, for all it was maybe two and half on the judgemental scale from one to ten. The office I was briefed in was my own, incredibly enough, I thought I really needed to do something about the place. It was all swiveling office chairs (fine, one chair) with leather upholstery and a cherry wood desk. It all looked very rustic and dignified, it looked very much like something that had been furnished with someone else in mind entirely and it made me feel as though I was wearing someone else's skin. I was too used to begging for every new USB cable I needed.

The allotment of money is a curious thing that follows its own rules and logic. In the beginning was the a pile of money, and the Pile was with divided, and so the Budget was created. In the beginning the Divide already existed. Some money was allotted to this and some was allotted to that, and the Budget was God, and while it made no sense to have cherry wood desks when the IT department was scraping for new computers to replace the hopelessly out-dated ones, the Budget was the God and the money for furnishing the Mahogany Row offices wasn't the same money that could be used for computers. Never mind that it was all pounds.

At least the chair was comfortable, and the desk had a cabinet I could use to store my Computer once I had someone to drill a hole for the cables.

"I thought that the Latch was one of those joke departments," I continue to complain, and while it might have been unkind, it was hardly untrue. To turn a complicated matter into a short explanation, there are three boxes on a checklist that make an efficient secret occult service and at least two must be checked: a big country (at one point of its history) and history longer than, say, three hundred years and wealth. Finland is fairly well off, compared to a lot of other EU countries right now, but big it is not and it became a country instead of just a region... I'm not even sure, Suvi told me at one point or another, but I can't remember. In any case, the three hundred years mark isn't even close.

They lack the history and the library, the database, the resources that take time to acquire. They lack political capital and an ample pool of human resources, and while I can't claim to know for sure, I was absolutely certain that they operated on a shoestring budget a lot more draconian than ours. They do their best and then either Laundry or the Thirteenth Directorate gets things done.

"Yet they have destroyed seven communions of the Skoptsy in three countries over the course of one month and there are, ah, unconfirmed rumours of a portal to an unidentified nether plane closed after it had already been opened." Angleton's voice was as mild as milk, but even he couldn't hide the interest simmering just below the surface, and... well, damn. I could see why we were salivating after the doodad.

"Officially you will inquire after the destruction of the Skoptsy. Unofficially you might need to conduct negotiations of a delicate kind. Find out what had changed, what the Finnish have gotten their hands on. You have the authority to trade schematics and technology if and when necessary, but know that you will be held responsible for an equal trade," Angleton told me. Don't get out-haggled, in other words.

"When will I leave? And am I going to get any kind of briefing material?" I asked and shifted my weight from one leg to another. I guess I could have simply sat behind my brand-new desk, but the truth is that in my head I can't yet feel superior to Angleton and so we were both left in this uncomfortable Limbo where I couldn't even be certain whether he approved, was amused or thought I should just buy myself a backbone.

Need I point out that this wasn't a promotion that I had expected? Because I knew that I was going to places, but damn. And damn CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN; I don't feel ready yet, but the time table has been tightened to it screams in protest. And maybe no-one is ever ready, maybe we just deal with what has been thrust upon us.

And if CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN was almost upon us, so was my flight. When I was young and stupid, I had a romantic notion about a job where I traveled for business. It sounded so glamorous, the idea of dashing through airports because I had a really tight connection I couldn't miss, tossing my boarding pass over my shoulder without sparing the attendant a look. Screw glamorous and without lube too; I barely had enough time to throw a few shirts, some underwear and a toothbrush to the travel bag at home and then I had to run without even waiting for Mo to come home. I must have looked like I was chased through the airport by a hostile mob and I certainly felt like it. At least I got to fly in the business class, presumably because Laundry didn't want to appear to be in the weaker position. We were the ones going to the Finnish so we had to do the general song-and-dance to seem more self-assured. The seat-belt sign was off so I straightened, a bottle of water still cradled in one hand as I reached for my phone.

"I'm so sorry, Mo, I'm not coming home this evening," I said when she took the call without preamble; I was still panting and doing my best to not look like an asthmatic Irish Wolfhound. "I'm going to Finland, if you want, I can try to find some reindeer and take pictures." Finland has reindeer, right?

"How bad it is this time?" Mo asked, tightness to her voice. "I love you too, don't be so effusive or you'll make me blush."

"Sorry, love, it's been a mad two hours and it's not even anything of biblical importance this time - as far as I know, anyway. Just some negotiations that absolutely couldn't wait the next flight. Knock wood for me, I don't think this plane has anything expect plastic badly disguised as wood," I said, mindful of the stewardesses and suit-clad men sharing the same small space with me. It hit me just then, the irony of the phrases we use when we don't believe. Back when I was an atheist, I had no trouble taking in vain the name of the god and devil. Even now I have no trouble jokingly doing something that has no effect whatsoever, or at least I hope that trying to invoke good luck my the rap of knuckles can't accidentally summon some horror associated with a good luck deity.

"Faith can be a dangerous thing, but if we can't have faith in anything else, we should have faith in each others. Sometimes it's all we can do," Mo said, clearly following the same train of thought. We fell silent for a while, the pause standing for all the things that couldn't be said out loud.

After saying my sweet farewells, I finally had the time to read through my briefing material. There was a Langford Death Parrot at the beginning of every line which made reading a slow going, but it certainly was an incentive to shield my phone from any curious outsiders; my wards protected me, but all the other passengers were in danger of death by brain aneurysm.

Believe it or not, the whole Skoptsky nonsense started because of Czar Nikon's assertion that Orthodox believers should use three fingers instead of two to cross themselves. This led to him being labeled the Antichrist by his enemies because of a reason no rational human being can comprehend. Pious Russians had long feared the year 1666, with its satanic associations, and Nikon's actions seemed to them to be a sign that the Apocalypse was fast approaching because the number of the Holy Trinity is apparently more evil than number two. Go proper applying of logic and theological consistence.

Long story made short, the Old Believers subsequently fled to Siberia and other remote areas of Russia to escape persecution and await the end of the world. The two most notorious of these cults were the Khlysty and their offshoot, the Skoptsy. The Khlysty believed that the way to salvation lay through the repentance of sins; the greater the sin, the greater the repentance, the Khlysty reasoned and rejected conventional doctrines of "right" and the "wrong," indulging in actions that they could later confess to. From the Khlysty came the Skoptsy, who believed that Adam and Eve were created sexless and the reproduction organs only appeared after humanity had fallen to the temptation. In order to avoid those nasty thoughts and sin the men castrated themselves and just to be on the safe side, they also cut off their women's breasts because they were equal opportunity fanatics. It wasn't like there were going to be any babies to nurse anyway.

They also believed that anyone who castrated twelve people was guaranteed a place in heaven, irrespective of any other sins he may have committed - and this is just the stuff that common history knows. When one gains access to their forays into the more esoteric acts in the service of their One God, it gets escalatingly more disturbing from there and keeps going. Rest in pieces, Skoptsy, your passing shall be unlamented and unavenged.

After three hours and fifty minutes, the flight landed in the town of Kuusamo and it was already dark on the outside. The town was small and the airport downright cosy, but I still had to wander around like a lost tourist reading a map, trying to find my contact. In the end she was the one to tap my shoulder and paraphrase Henry Morton Stanley.

"My name is Suvi Virtanen," she said and showed an identity card that read her name and Salpa, complete with a few sigils and a terrible picture. She was a middle-aged woman with mousy hair, round glasses and a body she hid carefully under a heavy winter coat. I could see her legs, though, and you don't get muscles like that doing yoga. "Please follow me, Mister Howard, I shall take you to Base Kipuvuori." She continued to talk about the weather and ice hockey, and her while vocabulary and grammar were both good, but the way she pronounced them was curious. About one third of the words came out her mouth Oxford-perfect and the other two had an accent that was understandable, but very notable. It was like she'd had a good teacher at one point and had then continued to learn independently from books. She also had a way of speaking a lot without actually saying much.

She took the wheel of an Audi, but instead of driving to the town, she turned towards the country side and kept going. And going. And going. Remember when I said that Finland is a small country? I meant the population count by that - a little over five millions - because they are about the seventh biggest in Europe going by acreage and she drove on for over two hours, taking turns to smaller and smaller roads until there were no streetlights anymore and I couldn't tell if we were going north or south anymore. The forest around us was a black wall against a backdrop of black, but she drove confidently until after taking a new turn the speed dropped by about twenty kilometers per hour.

"In this area, we have..." she begun to explain and hesitated. "I don't know the term in English, but the translation is moose danger. Sometimes they cross the road unexpectedly and when three hundred and sixty kilos of moose flesh hit a car at hundred kilometers per hour, it does a lot of nasty damage." All of a sudden the dark walls of the forest's edge seemed to loom closer, hiding all manners of suicidal wildlife within. Wouldn't it be ironic to survive almost summoning the Nyarlathotep, an obsessed unicorn abomination and various murderous cultists just to be killed off by a malicious moose?

I could imagine the correspondence between the Finnish and the Laundry after; no, sir, it wasn't a conspiracy or a unicorn with a polyandrous arrangement of chromosome Y source, we did an autopsy...

"Of all the stupid ways to potentially go," I mumbled. I didn't mean to invite conversation, but Suvi clearly took it that way.

"I tried once being a satanist," she told me cheerfully. "It was that phase when I rebelled against everything and even being a poseur seemed like a good idea. When I went to overturn some grave stones with my new friends, one of them landed on my leg and broke seven bones. Then the leg got a bad infection and it was almost amputated." It was an interesting anecdote, but I was mostly interested in whether she was careful enough of the moose.

It was only a five minutes after this when I first saw the lights of the Base Kipuvuori. It looked like an old army barracks with the fence around it, a gate guarded by two soldiers and barrack-like housings, but I doubt there was ever a proper army base with only six buildings. The snow crunched terribly loud in the silence of the night as I left the car, shivering in my very inadequate coat, and I wondered how far I was from the civilization, how many little bases like these the Finnish had,how easy it would be to disappear me in the middle of nowhere like that and frame it as the work of the killer moose. I wondered how many years it had been since the Latch's effectiveness had last been assessed; maybe I was being dramatic, but I was tired and alone in the middle of nowhere and most of my previous experiences with other agencies were with the Black Chamber. The Nazgûl had kindly refrained from turning me into a Manchurian Candidate when I had spent time as their guests, but just the knowledge that they could have can be creepy when you have a long flight behind you, it's as dark as in a black cat's stomach and there are men with guns abound.

"Welcome to Kipuvuori, I will show you to your rooms. You will meet with Director Jaskarinen tomorrow," Suvi said and led me to one of the barracks - or not-barracks, rather. On the outside it had been built like cookie-cutter army housing, but the inside held several one-person rooms, one of which was given to me. She informed that there was an electric sauna at the other end of the building and that if I wanted to use it, she would show me how to turn it on and off. I considered being offended that I couldn't be trusted to flip a switch and turn a dial or whatever was required, but I decided that risk of an electrical fire was a real concern.

"That's not necessary, but really, a sauna?" I asked cockily. I had never actually been to one, but it seemed like luxury to me.

"It's basically a human right in Finland," she shrugged and handed me a key to my my one room and a WC combo. "I will have a supper brought to your room. Good night, Mister Howard. If you hear someone walking outside during the night, don't worry."

Well, that was reassuring. I couldn't help feeling that I I was being held, though the room was actually quite big and, well, not precisely luxurious, but reasonably high-quality. There was a bed with a green bedspread, a table and two chairs, a standard lamp so ugly and shiny it had to be expensive and a bookcase with English books. I had to wonder about who had picked the books; there was Lord of the Rings stacked next to the Pride and the Prejudice and several translations of Dostoevsky next to Twilight. I considered picking The Great Gatsby only because I had read it in school back in the day and I wondered if the characters really were the selfish assholes I recalled, but I was tired and opted to go to the bed immediately after the supper. No sensible decision will go unpunished, of course. I woke up before six o'clock to a dragging sound outside my window.

There was a moment of disorientation when I couldn't remember where I was and why Mo wasn't by my side and the sound permeated this moment, with the crunching sound of several feet of snow waded through. The windows were double-glazed and at first I thought that I simply imagined it. Then the sound grew nearer and I remembered Suvi's warning of outside noises I shouldn't pay attention to. The moment of remembrance was when I heard a loud noise that sounded like someone was shoving furniture across the floor. Then everything was quiet and though I waited for what felt like a lesser eternity, no other noise was to be heard. I peered out of the window, but there were only the barely visible shapes of the mounds of snow and nothing else so I turned to my side and closed my eyes.

The silence was broken by a thin, high scream like that of a small mammal, maybe a rabbit, and then nothing. No steps, no mysterious rapping against the window, absolutely nothing. I was too busy keeping an eye on the window to fall asleep after that.

The sun wasn't up yet when I was "awakened" for breakfast at seven, but I was given a flashlight. The dining hall was in another building and I took the chance to walk towards my window. There was a groove in the snow and when I bent to look closer, there appeared to be footsteps at the bottom of it. It appeared that a guard had walked past and nothing odder, but I followed a bit further, I saw suddenly a gap of pristine, untouched snow a meter long and red stains on the white snow, lighter tracks that might have belonged to a rabbit ending with the blood.

Right. And I had no way to try and hide I had been following the steps. Oh, snow, the great northern counter-intelligence measure. I kept an eye on the wall as I returned, looking if something big and heavy had scratched it, but it remained non-distinguishable from the rest of the building. The steps were self-explanatory and the scream had been explained as well, but what had caused the dragging sound?

The breakfast was very much continental. There was porridge, sandwiches and coffee, and I got the feeling that the sandwiches were there for my benefit alone. Certainly not one of the men and women sitting at the long tables had picked up a single one.

"Those are industrial kitchen crap," a dark-skinned man told me and the bridge of his nose wrinkled condescendingly. "Get on the good side of Timo and Vaino will make you some by hand." He appeared very sincere and I would have taken his words at face value if not for my long experience with people who lie as easily as they breathe - and it not for the badly stifled gasps and snorts of laughter from the people around him. The sandwiches Vaino makes, I was told with a straight face, are to die for. She always bakes the bread herself because the conveyor belt bread has no soul, but way too many food preservatives instead. She cooks egg whites with onions, sour cream and mustard to make egg salad to go with the ham and cheese. And if you really flatter her and more importantly are Timo's friend, she might invite you for dinner later that day.

"And what is the catch?" I asked from the man. "There is always a catch; good, free food doesn't just drop from the sky like manna." And now his face darkened minutely and the people who had been eyeing me with amusement suddenly looked... it was a curious mix of pity and shame and defensiveness."

"You have to take it from her table," the man answered and filled his mouth with a huge gulp of coffee.

"A braver man than I am," one of the men a few seats away muttered into a spoonful of porridge. A moment of silence and they begun to speak in Finnish and I was studiously ignored.

After the breakfast there was a two-hour wait I used to ascertain that, yes, the characters of the Great Gatsby were indeed incredible assholes. It was actually almost bright by the time I was taking to the main office building, shivering all the way in my better suit and thin coat. Now that I could see the place in daylight, I was more sure than ever that it hadn't originally been an important place and even now it's biggest value might be that it was remote, far from civilians. It had been built for soldiers and now it had scientists as well. It was terribly efficient and terribly grey and hidden under the cover of snow it almost managed to look beautiful as well. They had at least tried with the office of Director Jaskarinen; it was very modern with a silver workstation, a yellow sideboard, a vertical file cabinet, a white desk, a grab-you-by-the-eyeballs yellow storage combination with doors and a bookcase with glass doors that clearly showed one shelf was holding several expensive-looking bottles of wine and whisky. It was the kind of place where a person could represent whatever needed representing and entertain guests.

"Welcome to Finland, Mister Howard, I hope you have been enjoying your stay," a voice boomed and Director Jaskarinen walked into the room. "Have you tried sauna yet?" Really, was is it with the Finnish and the sauna?

"I felt a bit tired yesterday, it was the jet lag. It's nice to meet you, Director Jaskarinen," I said and took in the whole lot of a man that suddenly stood before me. Director Jaskarinen was big in every sense of the word. He was tall enough to be a basketball player, his shoulders were wide like a barn door and he had collected quite bit of stomach, but the biggest thing about him was his personality. As he walked past me and took his place behind his suddenly very fragile-looking desk, I thought that he might well need a zip-code of his own.

"We need to correct that, my good man. No-one can visit Suomi and not go to a sauna. It can be in the spirit of the good old sauna diplomacy," he said and picked a cell phone from a desk drawer. I tried to protest that it wasn't necessary, really, but he was already speaking with someone.

"We can speak business in the sauna, we have a real one here, you know," he said after finishing the phone call to whoever operated the damnable torture chamber. "Electric saunas just aren't the real thing, we have those too, but the diplomat sauna is the real thing that's heated with fire." I got the feeling his English wasn't very good. I also got the feeling that I wasn't getting a choice in the matter.

Talking business in a sauna is a very singular way of doing business. First there is the sauna itself. The first thing you feel the heat. The heat surrounds you completely and you feel the dry heat inside of your nose as it envelopes you on the outside like a blanket. A wet blanket at that, paradoxically, because once water goes on the stove its _moist_ and you feel the sweat begin. And of course there is the fact that you are naked. When you sit by a stranger only wearing a towel around your lap, very awkward and getting the feeling that he wouldn't be wearing the towel at all unless it was for your delicate, English sensibilities, when you want to run out, but you force yourself to stay in the sauna. Even being tied on an altar didn't make me feel as vulnerable as trying to discuss an official trade with the Latch when not wearing even my pants.

"The prelude to the end - you call it CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, right - is coming very soon, right? It's important for everyone to be ready," Jaskarinen said with a good facsimile of idle musing and leaned backwards. His whole figure just screamed: you have shame and I don't, lucky me. Or maybe I was a little sensitive due to, again, naked. Why would anyone want to discuss serious business naked?

"So the latest analyses tell us," I tried for the same idleness. "Before the latest apocalypse is upon us." And let's now point out the sky is blue.

"The latest apokálupsis, you mean, though that literally means the lifting of the veil. Éskhaton means the last and together they make the end of the times," he said and laughed at my expression. "I read Ancient Greek in university, not English," he explained, looking quite smug. It took everything I had to not grit my teeth. Okay, so the last shreds of subtlety were officially out of the non-existing window now; the Latch had something we wanted and they knew it. I guess it was only natural that after decades of being overlooked they would milk the situation for everything it was worth, but if petty power games was the worst they would throw at me, fine, I could take it. If only it wasn't so hot.

"I'm sure we can come to an agreement," Jaskarinen smiled widely. It may sound trite, but I felt as though he could see right through me to the most subconscious thought. My pulse ran faster now like I had run a race. I had never never felt so hot before and wondered where is all that sweat was coming from, and I realize that the whole deal was ingenious way of psychological warfare that these madmen have been conditioned to enjoy since yearly childhood.

"Miss Virtanen will handle the particulars," he told me jovially, handing the negotiations over to someone fluent, and then he threw more water on the hot stones. "A simple exchange, a tool for a tool. We have a treaty with the Thirteenth Directorate and it would be nice to have a treaty with you too, but that can wait. Priorities, Mister Howard, our months are running short." I muttered something vaguely agreeable and escaped into the shower.

After the recreational torture and small talk, Director Jaskarinen was glad to hand me over to Suvi. We were in his office, my face was still red from the heat and she didn't seem to notice at all, only pouring me a (non-alcoholic) drink and crossing her legs primly as she sat down.

"The director is very old school - making nice with the Soviet Union for a neighbour kind of old school," she offered me an explanation. As I was pondering how fitting that mindscrew diplomacy was given the context, she turned the conversation to the cult that had been almost eviscerated and the portal that had indeed been closed.

"Almost eviscerated?" I asked. I had been under the impression that they had been a goner since Kiev.

"There are a few small fringe cells left in all likelihood, trying to extinguish a whole cult is like trying to slay a hydra. Don't worry, we are hunting them down as we speak here," Suvi promised with perfect confidence. After that it was all mathematics, and when I say mathematics, I mean lots and lots of calculations with more letters than numbers to the third power.

"First you start from probability theory and then decide, let's try to generalize it so that the numbers we used to call "probabilities" can be negative numbers. The probability theory is based on 1-norm; no weather forecaster will ever talk about a negative number chance of rain and sleet tomorrow. But if your theory is based on the 2-norm instead of the 1-norm, we no longer want two numbers that sum to one, we want two numbers whose _squares_ sum to one. Of course, the set of all such vectors forms a circle." Suvi gave me an expecting look, but I had to shake my head. I could picture the vector in my head, but the theory would somehow have to connect to observation. I could create Dha-Nho curves in my head if I felt suicidal or desperate enough, but I had a hard time figuring out what use a simple circle could possibly be.

"So I guess it isn't only classified, I would need a few intensive courses to understand it in the first place," I prodded her self-deprecatingly. Of course I didn't really have to understand _how_ this unitary matrix manipulating whatever they had discovered worked as long as it had a simple user interface - push a button, get a result. And I sincerely doubted their field agents all had a degree in quantum physics.

"Not only is it classified, we only barely understand the basics," Suvi took the excuse to launch into a long-winded explanation about N-dimensional mixed state and combining quantum states into bigger ones, at several points frustrated because she lacked the English words to explain what she meant.

If this was the non-classified part, I thought, no wonder they didn't seem too worried about my presence. I'm by no means uneducated or mathematically challenged, but it was all quantum-babble-babble-N-by-N-density-matrix-babble. Just half an hour and my brain had already been turned into a pretzel.

"So long story made short, this lets you collapse active portals," I interrupted when she paused to draw breath.

"Not only that, it can also make a cultist slip on a slippery floor and crack his skull when he falls, it can cause an electric fire in a computer used to make Dha-Nho curves and activate the sprinkler system, turning a little fire into a mass electrocution. Not only does good luck exist, Mister Howard, we can weaponize it." Suvi looked as smug as the cat that had gotten the cream and eaten the canary all weekend long. "So let's talk business."

The cards she laid on the table were these: they had a "source" that she would refuse to elucidate on unless both parties signed a binding contract and a beta-version of a replicate system they were ready to trade, as well as the alpha version once it was finished, unless we managed to finish it ourselves first of course. In return for this they wanted the SCORPION STARE. Negotiations can be long and drawn-out when both parties want several things the other may or may not be willing to give, but when both only have one demand, it becomes infinitely more simple. I could spend the whole week talking things through, but I knew that it would make little difference in the end. They wanted one thing, we wanted one thing and while I might convince them to take something other than the SCORPION STARE, it would have to be something of roughly equal importance. I could hear the echo of Angleton's voice in my ears: don't let yourself be out-haggled!

We would lose nothing of concrete monetary value if I agreed to trade the SCORPION STARE schematics and in a perfect world sharing would only make sense, the best kind of sense. Once CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN hit, if it hadn't already, the eldrich abominations were going to respect national borders about as much as radioactive fallout would; the probability of that was negative numbers. Rationally speaking any and all technology that can give humanity a fighting chance should be distributed far and wide between the organizations, but as the Black Chamber has all too often proved, the enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my friend. In the classical Prisoner's Dilemma type of trust exercise, the optimized outcome is that both players act altruistically, but the true dilemma lies in the fact that the best available outcome depends on both make rational choices. Now how rational is humanity?

The real problem, I realized, wasn't whether we could afford the so-called expense of the SCORPION STARE. I was to evaluate just how far we could trust the the Latch to not use what we could give them to stab us in the back later and whether the chances of that out-weighted the hitherto-unknown trustworthiness of their technology. I thought of the power game Jaskarinen had played with me. To choose to trust would get the humanity as a whole the statistically best outcome - if only both parties trusted!

Oh, the benefits of a promotion. I'm going to die of an ulcer if CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN doesn't get to me first.

 _Faith can be a dangerous thing,_ Mo's words came to me as I sat there, teetering on the tightrope of my snarled thoughts and hesitance. _But if we can't have faith in anything else, we should have faith in each others. Sometimes it's all we can do._

Better to have tried and failed than never having tried after all? Isn't that just another way of saying that if we go down, we will go down kicking, screaming, swinging and biting all the way?

"I agree," I said and it like freedom and jaywalking with eyes closed both. For the first time I understood why some people could get addicted to gambling; if there were money chits on the table instead of human lives, the rush would have been incredible.

The contract we made was a geas put on paper that wouldn't bind our respective organizations, but could utterly ruin us if it was broken; another display of trust, this time of the people we worked for. It was signed in blood for DNA evidence with our real names. Suvi had an advantage on me that moment, I admit. Knowing another's true name is power, but only if you know how to both write it (if there is written language) and pronounce it right. I took one look at hers and decided that if I ever needed to use it to bind her I was screwed. It's not the consonants or even their number, but the way they are arranged... Why two of the same next to one another? And just generally, why so many syllables?

What followed the signing of the contract was a long, polite conversation with a lot of non-relevant small-talk that can be condensed into a short question and answer session.

Q: What this new secret weapon of yours is and what does it do?

A: We have acquired a hunnu. She closed the portal and was a major player in our effort to take down the Skoptsy.

Q: What is a HUNNU?

A: A hunnu is the result of the third metamorphosis of an insect abomination species. The first form of the species is a larva that creates a cocoon after it has grown to roughly fifty centimeters; this isn't sapient yet. The second life stage resembles a legged snake, though it is in fact an insect still.

Q: And what does it do, precisely?

A: Not a whole lot. It eats small mammals, other insects and birds if it can catch any. It goes to hibernate to the bottom of lake at autumn and this is the beginning of the second metamorphosis. What we got after five years or so is a näkki.

Q: And what is a NÄKKI? (Was that the right way to spell it?)

A: (We don't believe in allcaps here, but otherwise yes.) Näkki is an amphibian, humanoid sapient life form a hundred to hundred and twenty centimeters tall that eats fish and mammals, including children. It has some magical abilities, including glamour that it uses to catch its prey. This is the last form for the male of the species, but the females undergo one more metamorphosis; a hunnu. They aren't only capable of glamour, but also manipulating the probability matrix of this plane of existence, which makes them extremely dangerous. 

Q: And what do the HUNNU do?

A: Pretty much whatever they feel like doing. They are amoral pansexuals; they will devour the male after procreating, they are capable of cross-breeding with humans and don't care if they are compatible with the people of various sexes and genders of any species they happen to meet. The mating between the hunnu and the näkki resembles psychological warfare more than anything, and the hunnu have the upper hand thanks to their probability manipulation. But everything that's sapient is fair game and the unicorns are nervous.

Q: Was that a virgin metaphor or do you actually mean...

A: You don't want to know. Consent is an overcomplicated, abstract concept to them, like morals in general. But there is a way to "gentle" them. If stabbed by an iron knife - or other conveniently sharp object - they will accept the person who stabbed them as their spouse and protect and care for them until their last breath. They will become the perfect housewife to the Stepford levels. They are very good cooks and have a reputation for being _very_ good in bed. They will also kick the hell's gates down for their husband if necessary. We believe this effect has got to do with magnetism, but so far we haven't been able to use an EMP pulse to the same effect.

Q: And what's the catch? There is always a catch.

A: If the husband is ever unfaithful, and they will know if he is, they will eat him, their children if they are able and any people they come across to.

Q: And this HUNNU's name is Vaino? And she makes the really good sandwiches?

A: Who has been talking? Her name is Vaino, yes. It's an old Finnish pagan name - actually a male name, but it was felt fitting for her. After all, it means persecution, a hunt, a chase.

A very long story made short, they were reverse-engineering the HUNNU's effect much the same way the Laundry had reverse-engineered the SCORPION STARE, but because it was more complicated and flexible, they only had a beta version. It could collapse portals right now, since open portals between different planes of existence are according to them ridiculously fragile and easy to disrupt.

"A stable bridge through a wormhole has negative energy density, that doesn't mesh well with normal laws of nature," Suvi said and shrugged. "It's the rest we have a hard time copying; when you want a computer that can calculate and cover even a fraction of every possibility of everything, the sheer hardware requirements are a nightmare to handle and the software is a terror beyond time and space by itself. One of these days it will probably start eating the kittens our techies are having with it." And that was... the worst part was that it sounded even somewhat plausible.

"I want to meet her," I said. Maybe it was foolish of me to get so involved when all I needed was what I was going to get right away, but I remembered that comment muttered into the porridge.

_A braver man than I am._


	2. Along Came a Mantis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally intended this to have only two chapters, but I wanted to post something now so only this went up.

The little house where Suvi took me – after a few hours’ time, to give Vaino the time to make a proper dinner, I was told – was at the far edge of the place, crammed into a corner right next to a wire fence. It was as cute as a button wooden one-storey house that had been painted red and surrounded by a white picket fence. There was clearly some kind of garden, though I was unsure whether it was for flowers or home-grown vegetables. In the cool, pristine light of winter it looked homey and idyllic and rustic, plus other similar adjectives. It also stood out from the surrounding base like a sore thumb.

“Not quite a log cottage?” I jested as we walked the narrow paved path, but my confusion was honest. If the hunnu was this Timo’s “wife” I could understand family housing of course and apparently there could even be children eventually (would they be born like humans or would she lay eggs, I wondered). This, however, seemed a strange effort, almost like a lie made architechture.

Then the door opened before we had the chance to ring the doorbell and Vaino stood in the doorway, a red striped apron wrapped around her waist. She was holding a cleaver in her hand and there is no way to do that outside a kitchen or a slaughterhouse and look innocent. Yet for all that the huge gleaming blade wasn't what drew my eye; it was her eyes. Though the right general almond shape, they were huge, copper red, easily twice the size of what I am used to seeing on a human face, and they consisted of thousands of tiny lenses like a fly’s, protruding from her face.

And she said something. I didn't understand a word of course, but her smile widened to show me twin rows of very white, very sharp teeth and she made a mock swing with her cleaver.

_"Ole hyvä ja kerro vieraallemme, että sielut eivät ole osa menuuta. Jos hän yrittää koskea Timoa, hänen maksansa on seuraava ruokalaji."_

Suvi flinced away from me and gave me a baleful look before going for her phone and simultaneously barking orders at Vaino, and I just knew. Or rather I knew that they knew and they knew that I knew that they knew.

Under some very exotic and thankfully very, very rare circumstances being _an_ Eater of Souls is a metaphysically transmitted disease. It wasn't something I thought every waking moment, it didn't keep me awake at night anymore unless I'd just had some very interesting nightmares about accidentally eating Mo's. But now I was suddenly forced to realize that sending me as a negotiator was probably akin to sending a diplomat to peaceful trade negotiations with a suitcase nuke - only, in this case the other party had a nuke-detecting nuke of their own. Suvi was talking frantically in her phone and I considered the pros and cons of the situation.

PLUS COLUMN: No more headgames by overcompensating Finns.

MINUS COLUMN: They just might decide to kill me which is always such fun times.

I did some calculations on which one would win, the probability-manipulating abomination or the soul-eating abomination-apparent and was forced to come to a dreary conclusion: it would be the afore-mentioned. I don't know how Angleton does it, it's not something I can just up and ask and I'm a little worried he might actually answer. My soul-sucking, however, is so far strictly limited to skin-to-skin contact and because this was Finland, the winter and we were outside, I was wearing my gloves. What was I going to do, smash my face into her? I tried to inch my right hand towards my left wrist and Vaino lifted a rubbery-looking hand for a strike, smiling even wider. Message received, I kept my hands well apart.

"It just seems these negotiations have become much more interesting," Suvi drawled and her earlier sign of fear had entirely disappeared. I have no doubt she was still afraid, but her face was as smooth and clear as the frozen surface of a pond. "Do you care to explain why this pertinent fact wasn't mentioned when you were sent here?" I considered lying, but couldn't come up with any explanation that would have seemed even remotely innocent, so I figured I might as well try honesty.

"I didn't even think about it. And I don't think the Mahongany Row thought you would find out." Which wasn't as dumb as a backpack of rocks, however it might in hindsight seem. Of course there was a chance I might eat a soul simply because I'm capable of doing so - or at least I hoped it wasn't a likely option - and of course Vaino must be able to see probabilities in order to manipulate them. We just hadn't known what the Finnish had was quantum probability manipulation. The Mahongany Row, we as I am Mahongany Row now, must have thought we had a good chance of getting away with it. Probability, meet weaponized luck.

"Tell me why I shouldn't order Vaino to kill you where you stand?" Suvi asked with a cold voice, well out of my reach. My gloves were beginning to itch.

"Because I just might manage to kill her instead, if she killed me the Laundry would demand heavy recompensation, if the deal was called off you would be the only one to suffer since I would already be dead and I never had any intention to eat souls in the first place," I made my list, deciding it was best to not try to play coy and give every reason at once. I didn't even have a gun.

"And how precisely do you intend to prove a negative?" Suvi asked, but it wasn't an order to kill me. The hunnu was dangerous, but she was merely a single creature and the Laundry had killed dangerous creatures before. This time the trust exercise was on her side, the evaluation of how much we can be trusted when already an abomination had been sent to the negotiations in the guise of a human - as far as they knew anyway. The Prisoner's Dilemma teases with the promise of an optimal outcome, but it hangs on mutual trust where in our line of work trust is a liability; how do you prove you are human if a gene test alone doesn't meet the bar?

"A negative can't be proved, but I'm ready to wear gloves at all times. And I can eat souls, but you could just decide to become a Skoptsy double agent and shoot me. Just ask your hunnu what the chances are exactly." I was talking to Suvi, but I hadn't removed my eyes from the white-haired creature before me. Those locks kept moving like tentacles even though they looked more like feathers and I had to suppress a shiver. Her eyes glittere and I had no way of telling whether violence or amusement lurked within the depths. Suvi asked a tense question and Vaino answered with two sentences. I awaited and Suvi spoke into her phone for a minute.

Vaino didn't lower the cleaver without a command, but she didn't seem terribly sad as she did. She kept smiling and smiling as Suvi ordered me to tape the gloves to my wrists. Vaino provided the packing tape before ushering us in. Allowing the door to close behind us went against my every instinct and even Suvi appeared concerned, though she hid her feelings better than I probably did.

By the time we were sitting by the dinner table and the flight, fight or negotiate reflex had relaxed its grip of me, I was able to observe the hunnu with more coherency. Indeed a humanoid, a hunnu cannot be mistaken for a mammal for any real length of time. What had at first glance appeared to be naturally off-white hair and on a second glance feathers was in truth antennae, soft-looking and leaf-shaped like a moth’s, moving restlessly and turning every-which-way as she surveyed the room without turning her head. Her cinnamon dark skin wasn’t skin at all, but something tougher and less elastic, though still flexible; not quite an exoskeleton, but something I imagined must be damnably difficult to pierce with a knife. And any Victorian lady who had her lowest ribs removed to constrain her corsets even tighter would have wept from envy at the sight of the truest wasp waist ever seen on a bipedal creature.

She said something to me in Finnish, with a soft if somewhat susurrating voice, which caused Suvi to cough a little.

“She asks you to keep in mind that she is a married woman,” she translated and I realized I hadn’t been precisely subtle, staring at the creature like that. She didn’t appear other than gently amused, however.

“Tell her she is very… elegant,” I asked and it wasn’t precisely a lie. Her eyes were grotesque, but her waist, now. So fine, I know I am a chauvinist pig who, driven by patriarchal mind set, strives to exercise control by defining what beauty is, that the modern standards for beauty are unrealistic and almost impossible to attain without plastic surgery and that Mo would kill me for saying this, but that waist was pretty damn elegant. The hunnu laughed a little and clapped her hands like a delighted child.

“She says you are very wise to not lie to one such as her,” Suvi repeated her words in English. I was left pondering this unnerving statement when the front door opened and to Vaino I ceased to exist.

In a stark contrast to her very singular looks Timo was a very normal man. Maybe a little taller than I am, yet not by much, sandy-haired, though short-cropped, muscular in the way of a soldier rather than a body builder. He could have passed me by on a street a hundred times before and I have wouldn’t recognized him now. To Vaino he appeared to be the most delicious eye candy a woman ever unwrapped, for she draped her arms around his neck and plastered her lips to his in a searingly passionate kiss. If the table wasn’t full of plates and bowls and the chairs weren’t full of us, I think she would have had him for a lunch.

I have to give it to the man: he didn’t flinch. He kissed her with his eyes wide open.

"Tell me," he said as he turned to look at me. "How do souls taste?" Choking on your own spit had always been just a figure of speech to me, but now I learned spit is indeed possible to inhale.

"Souls don't have a taste per se, the experience is more a rush," I played chicken with him, trying to see who would turn away in disgust first. Vaino was still hanging from his neck and his face wasn't precisely serene, but bored it was. I got the feeling that he was looking to feel something and a soul-eating creature seated at his table wasn't meeting his expectations.

"Is it a quick death or does the victim suffer drawn-out loss of self?" he asked with perfectly fabricated polite interest. I was the one to look away and swallow.

The meal that followed was awkward. The food couldn’t be faulted, or the setting. There was a huge amount of china and white linen, and we were only the good silver and seating charts short of a fashionable charity gala. It was in truth a dinner rather than a lunch too – I had at first thought Suvi had simply mixed the words. The first course was creamy mushroom soup that almost brought tears to my eyes with its rich taste. This was followed by whitefish served with potatoes, which was in turn followed by a small entrée of fried pork balls. When you get an entrée in the middle of a meal, you know the hostess is either trying to impress you or some kind of a kitchen witch. This was followed by roasted chicken and green salad, which was just as delicious as the rest of the meal had been, but at this point I could hardly force a few bites down. Suvi had taken smaller portions than I had and complimented – or I assume they were compliments – the course smugly as I gave her a glare.

And the hostess certainly tried as well, stopping to throw a conversational bone to her guests every now and then in-between chittering to her husband, serving him more of this and that and wiping a sauce stain from the corner of his mouth with so white a cloth napkin it made my eyes water. The cleaver remained on the table and I was using my fork and knife with gloves on which was less than comfortable. Timo kept smiling and answering my every question in perfect English.

“Eleven months ago,” he said and paused to take a bite of the herb-roasted bird. “Don’t worry, Vaino won’t be uncomfortable. She would even show you the scar if you asked.”

“That is hardly necessary, though thank you for offering. Does she always let you make the decisions for you?” I assumed he was the one who commanded her on the field and she certainly doted upon him.

“Obedience is a complicated subject, but she will always fight for me and care for me,” came the answer as easily as any.

The roast was followed by hot ice cream balls. The crust was golden brown and deliciously crunchy while the ice cream was still bitingly cold on the inside. I even managed to take seconds, which I regretted immediately when the second dessert course was brought to the table; plates of marmalade candy, fruits and cheese. There was sparkling water and strong coffee and everyone was smiling, smiling, smiling. I was smiling, smiling, smiling because the muscles around Vaino’s eyes were tight in a way that suggested, had she been human, there would have been maniacal gleam in her eyes. She kept sneaking kisses from Timo and I was scared she might cut me to pieces for not cleaning my plate at any moment.

The scene came to an end when the doorbell rang. There was a soldier in the Finnish army uniform with a Salpa armband attached who spoke rapid Finnish with Timo for a short while. Suvi was turned towards the hall and I was getting really tired of not understanding a word people were talking around me; they could have talked the weather or an impending terrorist attack or chopping me into soup ingredients for all I knew.

"Your timing was lucky," Suvi said suddenly. "We have found a straggler Skoptsy cell from Riga; I take it you would like to see Vaino in action?" And she was selling something I had already bought, but I knew Angleton would have my hide if i didn't take advantage of the possibility, as much as I wanted to get the hell away.

"I would love to," I said and I must admit I was a little bit curious. The chances of witnessing the closing of a portal were small or at least I hoped so, but weaponized good luck should make for an impressive sight when it was aimed at someone who wasn't yours truly. And this was when Vaino disappeared from the room and returned a few seconds later with two small pre-packed luggage, more a hand luggage really. The expression looked strange on her face, but I could swear she was disgustingly smug. At least the tape went off because Suvi was forced to reluctantly admit that would be difficult to explain during the border check, but I was warned that Vaino would keep an eye on every probability involving me.

The afternoon defined "hurrying up to wait" quite nicely and hurrying when your stomach upsets your center of gravity like a bag of lead isn't fun at all. A five man Latch squad, the tactical asset and I were back to Kuusamo in two hours and five minutes neat, but the plane wouldn't leave for another hour and I had an ample time to call Mo. The first two calls went to the answering machine and I wondered if something had happened and the Laundry had called for Agent CANDID again, but the third got through; she had only enjoyed a long hot bath with her phone turned off.

"Stanton would kill me if he knew I do this sometimes, but..." I could practically hear her shrug and I understood perfectly. We can only be stretched so far before we begin to fray around the edges. I don't ask details about Mo's job often for all my clearance is much higher now in the Mahongany Row. Most of the time she just doesn't want to talk about it, least of all with someone who she feels protective of. Still, I know that Mo needs her uninterrupted baths and other little luxuries more than anyone. Sometimes she sits up late into the night, playing music with that violin, and those eerie concerts I don't care to think about too much.

"I just called to let you know I'm flying to Riga now. There is a live demonstration," I told her, uncertain how much she was cleared to know of this. The need to know basis, in my experience, means that unless you are not doing it, you don't need to know about it unless you are Angleton, in which case you are night omniscient.

"Take care to not get caught in the line of fire; I know what kind of luck you usually have, Bob," she warned me. While I'm no superspy, I actually am pretty competent at my job, but if there is a traitor within the ranks, I am guaranteed to be working under them when the shit hits the fan. That might not happen anymore now that I'm promoted so hopefully that also means we have run out of traitors, but if I'm sent on a milk run to chase after UFO sighting, the whole thing is bound to be revealed as a Code Blue situation. This time, though...

"I have it on good authority that we will all be very lucky today," I said and it was actually pretty damn cheering prospect. Creepy human bugs or or no, maybe a plan would finally survive contact with the enemy and everyone would return in good health.

"Our flight, Howard," Timo called from the gate, standing next to Vaino. We were all in civilian clothes, which in her case meant burqa. No, really, a real burqa with that mosquito net part above her eyes like this was the hind end of Afghanistan.

"If that actually flies in Riga, I'm all sold," I muttered out loud. I was willing to believe the Latch had the authority to override the customs here in Finland, but come to think of it, just how does a giant bug woman travel in secret?

"And didn't that sound reassuring," Mo's voice was drier than a mouthful of sand. "Take care of yourself, Bob. I mean it."

Only after we had all taken out seats, mine directly behind Timo's, it occurred to me that the hunnu were supposed to be very apt with glamour. I leaned forward and tapped the man on the shoulder.

"So what gave now? Why bother to sneak her in if she could simply appear as human as any of us?" I asked with a lowered voice once I was certain we were only surrounded by Latch ears. I would wager all Finnish speak at least a little English and most are pretty fluent; the global entertaining empire called Hollywood tends to have that effect.

"Vaino dislikes the practice in my presence," Timo confided with a slight wince. Said woman was hanging off his arm like a limpet and turned her head when she heard her name. "She wishes to be certain I love her as she is. She would have used glamour if it was necessary, but then she would have been challenging to placate after." I did a double take when I realized she was insecure, though to be fair, if I was an insectoid abomination, I would think my wife was only using me for my magic as well. Come to think of it, he had literally taken her captive at knife point. And she was creepy and obsessive, but so far she hadn't really done anything terrible to anyone, in my sight at least.

But she was an alleged former omnisexual rapist and I hadn't come there to pity her in any case. As it turns out, a hunnu travels without a glamour by getting extremely lucky at all the right moments. In this post-towers world, when we landed in Riga, there was a scene at the customs. A female border guard was screaming at her male collegue, face red like a ripe tomato. Again it was all in language I don't speak, either Latvian or Livonian, but whatever was being said must have been scandalous because most people were riveted. Some pushed their way to the checkpoint, looking at the tips of their shoes or at the walls, anywhere except at the arguing couple. Yet another border guard was making calming shushing noises at the woman, who at this point burst into tears, and the man tried to embrace her only to get punched. The punch went a little to the side and hit his ear instead of his nose, at which point the other man begun to talk into a phone, not removing his eyes from the quarrel. 

And in the midst of all this unprofessional display one woman waltzed through the customs without showing her face, unimpeded by anyone. The rest of us stood obediently in line and showed our passports after the commotion had died down and both participants had firmly been escorted out to continue their extremely unprofessional quarrel in private.

"Now I wish I knew what that was about," I whispered to Timo. "What about the cameras?" A woman in a burqa slipping through the customs is bound to send every border guard in the world frothing at mouth this day and age. You could hide a bomb under one of those, or a smaller riffle. Maybe even something as dangerous as nail clippers or a small bottle of liquid and that's Serious Business.

"I wouldn't worry too much about them, something funny must have happened." He waved his hand dismissively and that was that. It was raining when we arrived and I got soaking wet in the time it took us to catch two taxis and gave them the name of a bar near the area where the Skoptsy had set up a shop. We had to pretend to be tourists, but a careful observer might have noticed every single of us ordered non-alcoholic drinks. The place was called Maz Suņu Māja, the atmosphere was lively and it didn't seem like the worst kind of tourist trap either; there were quite a few local sprinkled among the exited foreigners. The place rocked the whole exposed brick look going on with rustic furniture to complete the decor; I wouldn't have minded staying there for a while, but business is business. I paid some notice to the fact that no-one seemed terribly interested in the supposedly very religious and repressed women among us in this den of moderate sin as Timo opened a map on the table.

"There is slight jurisdiction friction with the Thirteenth Directorate, but I doubt they will rue us for killing a traitor," he begun with a quiet voice and everyone nodded; I pretended I knew what they were talking about. "Venianim Abakumov is a known associate of Glebov, our suspected cultist, and both have been seen here in Riga. There has also been a string of disappearances over the last two weeks; seven women and two men, all prostitutes; all people in desperate need of salvation from the sins of the flesh." There was dark muttering as we all imagined in what condition we would find these people - if we found them at all. Nothing more was said and I knew the explanation had been purely for my benefit. 

The map had two locations marked with red, possible hideouts of the Skoptsy. Timo asked something from Vaino, the only person without a drink at hand; how would she have drink it, with the veil in the way? My mind went off on a tangent for a moment, wondering how the Afghan women do eat and drink. They take the veil off at home, right? But Vaino didn't stop to wait for my contemplation. She might have looked at the map or not when she picked a coin from the folds of the fabric and let Lady Luck decide. Heads up, she pointed the warehouse closer to the harbour and that was that. It was good enough for every man present.

We poured out of the pub and were on our way. Riga is a beautiful old city, but every city has its poorer areas and let me tell you, the Skoptsy weren't going to be found from a nice gingerbread house next to an old cathedral. It's all those dreadful noise complaints, you see, just try mutilating someone and people complain how there goes the neighbourhood. It looked like the rain might ease off when we left the pub, but that was not to be and the weather didn't endear the area to me any better. We walked past working port after working port, featuring lumber works, coal yards, container ports and petroleum outlets. Our first stop wasn't the warehouse, though, but a den of wrath and other less moderate sins. We were going to pay a visit to a Russian illegal arms dealer.

The Laundry does the same sometimes with shady dealers of various nationalities all around the world. Weapons have become practically impossible to smuggle through commercial flights after the towers fell and while pursuing the Treaty of Carcosa and AGATE STAR CITADEL might get strings pulled for us in certain places, sometimes there are no other options. Since the Latch isn't a signatory in these treaties they only have one option, though if they can actually get the alpha version of their quantum probability doodad finished, I guess customs won't be an issue for them anymore. I was wondering how said doodad would be named - no doubt something Finnish and probably entirely unpronounceable.

"Why didn't Vaino smuggle you weapons if it is so easy for her," I asked one of the men. He was the only ethnically divergent of the group, Wang something, and I was pretty sure he was a Viatnamese immigrant. He looked almost as bland and unremarkable as Timo in his own way, except for his eyes. His left eye was so dark it was almost impossible to tell the pupil from the iris even up close, but the right one was very pale, murky gray. I was fairly certain the Laundry wouldn't have sent someone half-blind out on the field, but I wondered about it. The shade of gray was unhealthy and it had an almost oily sheen that made my stomach clench.

"It's about probabilities," he explained shortly and stepped further away from me; it hadn't escaped my notice that with the exception of Timo they all shied away from me. It was precisely the same way they shied away from Vaino, come to think of it. "Getting a woman in burqa without someone pulling the veil through is unlikely. Getting guns through is unlikely. Having it both ways is even less likely," he continued. It is called cumulative probability, and though Vaino had seemed impressive so far, I was curious to note that there were some limits to what she could do. So collapsing active portals was easy because they were unstable to begin with. Causing two workplace lovers to have a public figh, probably over infidelity, just at the right moment and have this consume everyone's attention, was - difficult, maybe? Though it made her insistence of using her true form in front of Timo even more curious and also made me conclude that her priorities and party-mindedness were indeed in question. 

Apparently making alert border guards just that uninterested in a woman in a burqa was either even harder or just plainly impossible, and the cumulative effect of getting a woman in a burqa through while also getting guns in the hold through was just plain too unlikely, at least on a short notice. She had at this point only had a few hours to arrange the world to her satisfaction and due to the butterfly effect I imagined that the longer time she had, the more variables she could insert and change and the more options she would have to work with.

I was still trying to establish some kind of scale for her capabilities and kept banging my head to the wall that was a lack of data points when we arrived to our destination. On a first glance the place appeared a coal yard just like any other, but the number of armed guards patrolling the premises was rather unlikely. There were also several cameras jutted from the roof, their red lights blinking at us. The perimeter around the facility was simply a wire fence, but I had no doubts that any foolish thief attempting to climg over it would meet a sorry fate.

There was coal dust everywhere, the rain was gluing it to the pavement and it yet permeated the air itself despite the downpour in a persistent sense of smell of an oily fuel smell, dirty and yet not earthy in the least. We stopped by a small booth where a very alert-looking man barked us questions in broken English while two other thugs appeared menacing by his side.

"Show identification!" was the order, after the group had shown their cards and repeated the necessary passwords. The man's eyes were small and cold like a fish's and his face was red in a way that suggested he had imbebed in more than his share of vodka, but he was sober now. Though the very intimidating gun he was carrying was new - an AK-17 in the capital city, I could only imagine the amount of bribes these people had to pay - I had seen this type before. He was every supervisor who always demanded one more form to be filled, he was the one always sitting on top of the requisition for something absolutely necessary a few more days just so people would keep pleading with him.

Vaino handled him by pulling her veil off. Turns out nothing proves you are an abomination-hunting secret organization like an abomination on a leash.


End file.
